Displaying items by tag: France
Ciments Calcia commences Euro285m Airvault cement plant upgrade
17 October 2022France: Heidelberg Materials' subsidiary Ciments Calcia has laid the foundation stone for its construction of a Euro285m CO2 emissions-reducing upgrade to its Airvault cement plant in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Ciments Calcia first published its plans for the installation of a new 4000t/day production line to replace both existing lines at the Airvault plant in 2021, with commissioning scheduled for mid-2024.
Germany-based ThyssenKrupp secured the order to supply a 1200t/hr double-shaft hammer crusher, a longitudinal blending bed, a 370t/hr Quadropol QMR² 45/23 vertical roller mill, a 10,000t raw materials tangential blending silo, a single-string, five-stage Dopol cyclone preheater with integral calciner for alternative fuels (with the possibility of conversion to oxyfuel), a Polytrack clinker cooler, a solid recovered fuel preparation line and dedusting systems for the project.
Trevor Sands appointed as head of ENVEA Global
12 October 2022France: Monitoring systems producer ENVEA Global has appointed Trevor Sands as its chief executive officer (CEO). He succeeds Christophe Chevillion in the post.
Sands worked recently as the Global President of Servomex Group, a company in the gas analysis sector. Prior to this he ran the Control Valves business for IMI, he was the CEO of Cosalt and also spent 13 years with Emerson, including leading the Fisher Valves European business and later running the Daniel Measurement and Controls Division. His early career was spent with Invensys, Unitech and Arthur Anderson in various finance roles. Sands graduated from the University of Bristol in the UK with an undergraduate science degree.
ENVEA Global is a manufacturer of on-line monitoring solutions for industry, laboratory and local and government institutions. It was founded in 1978 and became a public company in 2006. Carlyle Group is its majority shareholder.
Vicat expects earnings to drop in 2022
12 October 2022France: Vicat has revised its full-year 2022 earnings forecast. The group now expects to record a drop in its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA). In France and Switzerland, rapidly rising energy costs have outstripped the producer's sales growth so far in 2022, while, in the US, its upgraded Ragland, Alabama, cement plant only entered production following a 'very gradual start-up' in mid-late 2022. Vicat also carried out debottlenecking work on its Kalburgi, India, cement plant during the year to date.
Vicat said that all other markets in which it operates are developing in line with the expectations detailed at the time of the publication of its first-half 2022 results in August 2022.
France: SaintGobain and Ireland-based Ecocem have announced a partnership to bring low carbon cement products to market. Designed to reduce CO2 emissions from cement, mortar and concrete, these products are intended to support the acceleration of the construction industry’s transition to a low-carbon economy. A research and development cooperation between Ecocem and Chryso, Saint-Gobain’s construction chemicals subsidiary, is planned to accelerate the development of high-performance admixtures to enable low-carbon cements. This partnership will also cover Saint-Gobain’s mortar business Weber in Western Europe and the distribution and concrete manufacturing activities of POINT.P in France.
Donal O’Riain, the chief executive officer of Ecocem, said “The potential exists today to reduce cement industry emissions dramatically by 2030 and to align with the targets set by the Paris Accord. Ecocem’s new generation of scalable low-carbon cement technologies can deliver on this potential. Our deep partnership with SaintGobain will support our efforts to scale these technologies and demonstrate to the world how we can decarbonise the cement, concrete and mortar industries.”
Ecocem is producer of slag-based cement products with operations in Ireland, the UK, France and the Netherlands. Saint-Gobain holds a 25% stake in Ecocem and describes itself as a significant investor in the company for nearly 15 years.
Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies to supply concrete for glass wool recycling plant
03 October 2022France: Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies is supplying its low-CO2 clinker-free cement for the construction of an industrial prototype glass wool recycling plant in Chemillé-en-Anjou by Saint-Gobain subsidiary Isover. The company will supply its H-UKR cement for use in the facility’s foundations.
Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies co-founders Julien Blanchard and David Hoffmann said "This unprecedented project is totally in line with what we want to embody since the creation of Hoffmann Green: the promotion of the circular economy in the construction sector through the revalorisation of waste from industry."
Fives to supply Pillard NOVAFLAM burner to cement plant in France
30 September 2022France: Fives has secured a contract to supply a 65MW Pillard NOVAFLAM Evolution burner to a cement producer. The customer’s aims are to continue to maximise alternative fuel (AF) use, to improve clinker quality and to reduce NOx emissions at its cement plant. The order also includes precalciner burners and a natural gas-powered 35MW Pillard hot gas generator, as well as valve trains and pumping systems.
Ciments Calcia sets date for start of construction of new production line at Airvault plant
28 September 2022France: HeidelbergCement subsidiary Ciments Calcia plans to lay the first stone of a major upgrade project at its Airvault cement plant on 5 October 2022. The event will mark the start of the construction phase of a new 4000t/day clinker production line, according to La Nouvelle République newspaper. The Euro300m project will be built by Germany-based ThyssenKrupp.
Hoffmann Green enters UK market
14 September 2022UK: Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies, a French company that manufactures and distributes low-CO2 clinker-free cement, has announced that it has signed its first partnership agreement in the UK with Cemblend, a supplier of customised cement powder mixes.
Hoffmann Green will supply Cemblend with its H-IONA, H-UKR and H-EVA clinker-free decarbonated cements for distribution to its customers in the UK and Ireland. This exclusive distribution agreement with volume commitments initially runs until the end of 2023 and is a first step towards the signature of a licensing agreement which could see Cemblend build and operate a production unit similar to Hoffmann Green's French production facilities.
Julien Blanchard and David Hoffmann, co-founders of Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies said, "We are pursuing the milestones of our international development with the signing of this structuring partnership in a strategic market in Europe. This first distribution contract in the UK is further proof of the attractiveness of our low-carbon solutions outside our borders. It is a first step in our cooperation process with Cemblend to build eco-responsible buildings across the Channel."
First half 2022 update on multinational cement producers
10 August 2022Second quarter results have been released for many of the European-based cement producers, so we’ll take a look at how they are doing so far in 2022. The general trend for the companies sampled here is that revenue is up, cement sales volumes are down and earnings are varied. Added to this, ready-mixed concrete (RMC) and aggregate sales volumes have risen for most of these organisations. Each producer did well in the US, less well in Europe and differently elsewhere. Concurrently, input costs for raw materials, energy and logistics have been rising and this has been passed on to consumers fairly consistently as price rises.
Graph 1: Sales revenue for selected European-based multinational cement producers in the first half of 2022. Source: Company financial reports.
Graph 2: Cement sales volumes for selected European-based multinational cement producers in the first half of 2022. Source: Company financial reports.
Graph 3: Ready-mixed concrete sales volumes for selected European-based multinational cement producers in the first half of 2022. Source: Company financial reports.
Holcim is currently in a state of transition with responses from regulators on big divestments in India and Brazil expected in the second half of 2022 alongside its diversification into light building materials. Both North America and Europe did well for the group in the first half of 2022, particularly the former, where cement sales volumes rose, unlike the other regions. Asia Pacific was more problematic with inflation and pricing issues reported. Cement demand was also said to be ‘softer’ in China and the Philippines compared to the first half of 2021. The region’s recurring earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) also fell.
HeidelbergCement’s half-year results were less upbeat with cement sales volumes down by 2.6% on a like-for-like basis, RMC sales volumes stable and aggregates sales volumes up by 1.7%. One point to note here is that HeidelbergCement divested its business in the western US in late 2021 and the graphs above do not show like-for-like changes. However, one reason for the dour tone was that higher input costs had led to a 11.4% drop in the group’s result from current operations before depreciation and amortisation (RCOBD) to Euro€1.53bn. It blamed this on its inability to raise prices sufficiently to counter ‘significantly’ higher costs of energy and transport.
Cemex benefitted from its strong presence in the Americas but even this wasn’t enough to shield it from the negative effect upon earnings of higher energy costs and supply chain disruptions. So, net sales increased in Mexico and the US but operating earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell. In Mexico this was blamed on a higher base for comparison in 2021. In the US a declining EBITDA margin was attributed to higher energy costs and supply chain headwinds from maintenance, imports and logistics. Interestingly though, Cemex managed to raise both sales and earnings in its Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia despite cement sales volumes slipping. It said it was able to do this due to well executed price rises.
Buzzi Unicem reported growth in sales revenue and earnings despite falling cement sales volumes. It attributed this to a ‘strong’ increase in prices. However, it noted that the mounting energy costs had contributed to a decline in its EBITDA margin. Deliveries for the half-year grew in the US, Central Europe, Poland and the Czech Republic. They fell in Italy and, unsurprisingly, Ukraine. Also, despite the growth in deliveries in Poland and the Czech Republic in the reporting period, Buzzi Unicem said that a slowdown in Europe had become evident in the second quarter of 2022 and was particularly evident in Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic. In Ukraine the group reported that activity had resumed at its Volyn plant in the north-west of the country following the Russian invasion in February 2022. The Nikolayev plant, in the south, though continued to remain idle. Sales volumes halved in the country year-on-year. Given the circumstances it seems amazing that they didn’t fall by more frankly.
Finally, Vicat had a tougher time of it than some of the other companies featured here. Its sales revenue grew significantly, as a result of higher prices, but earnings tumbled. The latter was blamed on a high base for comparison in the first half of 2021 and the energy situation. A few non-recurring capital intensive projects at various plants, including the start-up of the Ragland plant’s new kiln in the US, didn’t help either.
Much of the above leaves an uncertain outlook for the second half of 2022. All of the cement producers here expect to increase their sales revenue and raise their prices. Most of them though are rather more circumspect or downright pessimistic about what the state of their earnings will be. The companies covered here are multinational but with a focus on Europe and the US. We have omitted plenty of regional producers elsewhere around the world in this roundup that have already published their results, such as India-based UltraTech Cement or Nigeria-based Dangote Cement. The other big market that is missing is China, where the producers are mostly yet to publish their half-year results. We will return to cover these topics in future weeks.
France: Despite a 12% year-on-year increase in consolidated sales to Euro1.75bn from Euro1.56bn, Vicat recorded a net income drop of 17% to Euro77.8m from Euro93.5m in the first half of 2022. The group attributed the decline to increased global energy costs and to non-recurring industrial costs in France, India and the US. These costs included investments in exceptional maintenance at its Montalieu cement plant in France and a debottlenecking capacity expansion at its Kalburgi, India, cement plant. Geopolitical events also impacted the profitability of the producer’s business in Mali. Group cement sales rose by 17% year-on-year to Euro1.1bn.
Chair and chief executive officer Guy Sidos said “The basis for comparison in the first six months of 2022 was unfavourably high given the sales and profitability levels achieved in the same period of the previous year.”